How can California shrug off crises the way that Rome does?

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The exterior of the Coliseum in Rome is a must see for visitors of Rome. Built almost 2,000 years ago and the home of Gladiator games during the Roman empire. (Photo by Nick Koon, Contributing Photographer)

The question might seem hypothetical, but I found it inescapable last week in Rome, where I ran a global forum on the future of direct democracy. Our forum’s mission was hopeful: Hundreds of participants, from 80-plus countries, discussed how to democratize the world’s democracies.

But each morning, I encountered the less-hopeful remains of fallen empires.

To reach Rome’s city hall, the conference site, I had to walk up Capitoline Hill, passing two ancient monuments, each of which inspired a different thought.

The first monument, the Colosseum, seemed less special with each viewing. What’s the big deal about a dilapidated old stadium known for violent spectacles? L.A. and Oakland have similar coliseums today.

But the second monument, the Roman Forum, felt profound, its layers of ruins serving notice that no regime and no republic lasts forever.

Still, the Eternal City’s enduring lessons lie not in the ends of eras, but in how people respond to those ends. As Rome resident Matthew Kneale’s book, “Rome: A History in Seven Sackings,” shows, Rome survived thru millennia because the oft-conquered Romans eventually “shrugged off catastrophes and made their city anew.”

California, too, is a place created by conquest. For all our booms, the state has mostly been fashioned during the busts, when we had to reassess. Our state government’s progressive structure was fashioned by San Francisco earthquake survivors while their city lay in ruins. Today, Californians from Redding to Montecito wrestle with the aftermath of fiery or muddy destruction. If we stay, do we rebuild the way it was, or do something different?

For all California’s disaster experience, the soon-to-come end of the American empire — accelerated by crushing debt, faltering defense alliances, trade wars and racial resentment — will test the state like never before. We are so spoiled by being the richest part of the richest country. How will we respond when we lose that?

Will we be drawn into a polarized America, and ape its violence? Will we quietly accept diminished prospects? Or will we come together, and find a distinguished place in a less American world?

Rome is a great place to think through such questions, since it has a young forward-thinking government. Led by 40-year-old Mayor Virginia Raggi, Rome is run by an Internet-based party called the Five Star Movement, which uses an online program to determine its agenda.

It’s unclear whether Five Star can reinvent Roman democracy with digital platforms, or whether it will fail like other populist movements. But it was refreshing to watch its young city officials try.

Unfortunately, each day’s optimism lasted only until I returned to the hotel and turned on CNN. The screen conveyed America’s late-empire awfulness, and again posed that question: how will California get through this? The Palo Alto psychologist on TV embodied the Californian predicament. Dr. Ford struggled to maintain her dignity in the face of the American meltdown.

It looked like opera, with the tenor Kavanaugh singing his angry arias about the maiden he claims he did not violate. And couldn’t they get younger actors for the chorus? Dianne Feinstein is a half-century older than the people running Rome. How could the New World of America have become so old?

One evening, Mayor Raggi took hundreds of conference attendees to a fashionable, open-air Roman nightclub with a canopy of cypress trees so beautiful even Monterey residents would marvel. Different areas of the club represented different ecosystems—marsh, forest, beach—while various bars offered different cultural styles—Japanese, Thai, Cajun, TexMex, and something resembling Disneyland’s Enchanted Tiki Room. There were hammocks, beds, and a maze of laurel bushes.

The place’s name? The Sanctuary.

California is proudly a sanctuary for unauthorized immigrants. But when empires fall, we all need sanctuary. Here’s hoping that California can construct a new, diverse democracy atop the ruins of the American one.